“We don't need to pay all this money to keep troops all over the country, 130 countries, 900 bases. But also, just think, bringing all the troops home rather rapidly, they would be spending their money here at home and not in Germany and Japan and South Korea, tremendous boost to the economy.”

— Rep. Ron Paul (R-Tex.), Feb. 7, 2012

[....]

The Facts

[....] What’s going on here? The answer is that the list essentially tracks with places where the United States has a substantial diplomatic presence. (The United States has diplomatic relations with about 190 countries.)

In other words, Paul is counting Marine guards and military attaches as part of a vast expanse of U.S. military power around the globe. (In fact, under Paul’s logic, dozens of other countries are “occupying” Washington when they send attaches and other military personnel to their embassies here.) But this document indicates that only 11 countries actually house more than 1,000 U.S. military personnel [....]

Comments

There are still over 1000 troops in Iraq, so make that 12. Plus we've just announced we're going to increase troop presence in Australia to 2500 troops, and in Israel "several thousand", plus Gitmo is just under 1000 - around 930, which is probably fungible depending on TDY duties, so can be 1000+ at any given time.

What we do in Yemen and other "hot spots" going forward is also of great interest.

Rather than attacking Ron Paul for asking sensible questions, why not save your fact checking for US government bullshit? How are those smart bombs/smart drones and winning hearts and minds in Afghanistan & Pakistan going? Oh right, Petraeus is no longer our man in Kabul, he's "reforming" the CIA. If Iraq had given us immunity, we'd still be building up the Green Zone - as it is, we built a huge complex for indefinite Middle East dominance, and dagnabbit, now we have to go and find another willing victim.

Thanks to Glenn Greenwald, we get an idea of US base coverage in the Middle East. But no, Ron Paul's a nut, that's all we need to know. Each star is a US base. If only we could afford tu fund a jobs program in the US.... or God forbid, R&D for future technologies....

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In the News

I have no idea or particular opinion about whether Garrison Keillor is guilty of anything, though it's always struck me as odd. But this somewhat but not quite illuminating article gums up the works a bit when taken as a part of a whole. The whole, of course, being accusations flying hither and yon with little if any explanation - even when they could stand some.

(THREAD) Yulya Alferova—ex-wife of Russian oligarch Artem Klyushin and a member of Trump's entourage in Moscow in 2013—is yet another witness who confirms, albeit inadvertently, Trump lied about what happened at the Ritz Moscow. The list of such witnesses is now very, very long. pic.twitter.com/BViILTZP67

On the hamster wheel of continual work, production and consumption, and Hebert Marcuse's.dreams.

[....] Marcuse did not live to see the 1980s, however [....] But his ideas lived on. In a 2004 essay for Harper’s magazine, for example, novelist and essayist Mark Slouka took to task the U.S. obsession with work [....]

One woman’s account of clandestine meetings, financial transactions, and legal pacts designed to hide an extramarital affair.....American Media, Inc., the publisher of the National Enquirer, had paid a hundred and fifty thousand dollars for exclusive rights to McDougal’s story ...David Pecker, AMI CEO, describes the President as “a personal friend... he never printed a word about Trump without his approval.”

Treason doth never prosper: what's the reason?
Why, if it prosper, none dare call it treason.

Was Trump diminishing the significance of the word treason, projecting onto the opposition (as he so often does) his own transgressions, by accusing Democrats of treason for not applauding him at the SOU?

Talking heads don't appear to have had much time to look at the details yet. Reporters are waiting on the formal announcement from Rod Rosenstein of the indictments. It is clear that they are directly related to Putin, not clear yet whether to the Trump administration.

A federal grand jury in the District of Columbia returned an indictment Friday against 13 Russian nationals and three Russian entities accused of violating US laws to interfere with US elections and political processes [....]

[....] in a blow to President Donald Trump, the GOP plan to enshrine his four-part immigration framework came the furthest of any proposal from reaching the 60-vote margin needed for passage, failing by 39-60. A competing bipartisan agreement got rejected, 54-45, after a furious White House campaign to defeat it, including a Thursday veto threat.

WASHINGTON — Steve Bannon, who served as President Donald Trump’s chief strategist, was interviewed by special counsel Robert Mueller over multiple days this week, NBC News has learned from two sources familiar with the proceedings.

When a transgender woman told doctors at a hospital in New York that she wanted to breast-feed her pregnant partner’s baby, they put her on a regimen of drugs that included an anti-nausea medication licensed in Britain and Canada but banned in the United States.

Within a month, according to the journal Transgender Health, the woman, 30, who was born male, was producing droplets of milk. Within three months — two weeks before the baby’s due date — she had increased her production to eight ounces of milk a day [....]

President Trump endorsed a 25-cent gas tax hike to pay for infrastructure at a White House meeting this morning with senior administration officials and members of Congress from both parties, according to two sources with direct knowledge. Trump also said he was open to other ways to pay for infrastructure, according to a source with direct knowledge.